Watch Over Her
by Awska
Summary: The story of a young asari girl, her baby sister, and the apocalypse. Set on Thessia about a week after the end of the Reaper War.
1. Flotsam

Uska gingerly placed the tips of her toes just on this side of the seam of the floor tiles, careful to make sure her footing was secure before shifting her weight onto the leg. Then the other foot just a little further up, cautious to keep as close to the seams as possible so that the uneven slabs wouldn't creak under her as she made her way to the door on the other side. There was a support thing under the seams—she'd watched her father building the floor for hours—so it would have been safest to step right on them but stepping on seams was bad luck. Erda had said so. It was probably not true, but she didn't want any more bad luck and avoiding seams and other cracks was a small price to pay for that. The floor had been very pretty when daddy had finished with it, and mommy had said she was really proud of her and then they had kissed. Now it was all bumpy and you could see many of the tiles were broken because of when the ground moved from the explosions it never went back exactly like it was before. Another step. Two more, and she'd be out of the door and in the hallway, on safer footing. Uska wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and ever so quietly padded forward until she could grasp the frame of the door. Supporting herself against it with one hand, she leaped over the last little bit of the pretty floor and onto the solid and quiet plastic floor on the other side. Daddy hadn't had the time to finish this side yet and the explosions didn't hurt the plastic at all.

She steadied herself against the hallway wall although she was getting pretty good at the leap and landing right, like the circus acrobats. She wanted to be completely quiet, though, until she got at least a few meters further away. Before moving, she turned on the balls of her feet, holding her breath for the few seconds she peered intently at the small, unmoving bundle on the bed on the far side of the room. To her relief, her sister was still sleeping even though her fingers were curling and uncurling slowly, and her little lips moved like she was sucking on her bottle which is why Uska had made herself get out of the bed. She didn't want to wake her sister…it felt better when she was awake because then there was someone else too, and Uska wasn't by herself, but the baby was always so _sad_ when she was awake. She couldn't understand where mommy was. Uska liked it better when her sister slept because she wasn't sad and afraid, except sometimes if she had bad dreams, but Uska could help a little with those. Better than when she was awake even though Uska did try very hard then, too. She didn't want to wake her sister, but she had to get more formula. And go to the bathroom.

Sure that she hadn't woken her up, Uska walked a little further away from the door and then glanced around herself to make sure it was safe and swung her little bag off her shoulder and undid the knot she had put on it. Daddy had taught her five different knots. Most of her friends didn't even know _one_, but her father had said that everybody should know how to make knots because maybe you didn't have any clasps that you could use. She knelt down, setting the bag on the floor very carefully and rolling down the sides so she could get the stuff out without dropping it. She pulled out the pistol first, and made sure twice that it was turned on and that it had the blue safety light on too. Daddy said it was very important to be safe with the pistol. Mommy had said that it was more safe without one altogether, but she had still given Uska a pistol of her own when they had come down to the basement.

She held the pistol under her arm for a moment to warm it, and then tucked it into her waistband. It was almost as long as her thigh and pretty heavy and it kind of pulled down on her pants, but not too bad because it didn't fall off from under the waistband and she couldn't very well carry it in her hand anyway because she needed a free hand for the milk. She could carry it in the bag but then it would take too long to take out if she needed it, so she only took the bag out of the room because it was easier to cross the floor with it on her back. She hated the feel of the cold metal against her thigh, but she'd once tried to warm it for over a minute and it was still cold, so she didn't bother anymore. You just winced, and then you got used to it pretty quick. Except she couldn't wear her dresses, because she had to have the pants instead, that she didn't like. Sometimes, but not all the time.

With the pistol stowed away, she pulled the bottle out of the bag and peeled off the dress she had wrapped around it. It took a little while to make her bag quiet when she prepared it, but it gave her something to do at least. There wasn't much to do down here, so anything that occupied her mind for a while was pretty good. She had challenged herself to come up with the best possible way to pack her little bag, and she was pretty happy that she had figured out how she could use just one dress to make it almost completely quiet. Bottle and pistol. She nodded to herself, pursing her lips, and stood back up.

She was almost sure that they hadn't found the entrance because she hadn't heard anything and they weren't all that quiet, like when she and mommy had heard them the last time, but she padded toward the corner very slowly anyway because it would be stupid to just run right into them because you weren't being careful. She wasn't very scared because you could shoot them, but maybe a little. She always tried to make sure her sister didn't know she was even a little scared though. A meter from the corner she pushed herself against the wall and peeked around it, careful that they couldn't see her if they were looking. But there was nobody there, just the empty staircase and the hatch above it, and the doorways to the bathroom and the small kitchen.

She ran to the bathroom first, darting underneath the stairs and straight in, and closed and locked the door after herself. She went about her business as quickly as she could and then, after another cautious peek to make sure the hallway was still empty, dashed right into the small kitchen. She set the bottle down on the counter and then cautiously pulled herself up on it too. Holding on to the wall for support she got up and opened the cupboard, leaning back a little to let the door swing open in front of her. She could have used her power to reach up to the highest shelf because she was pretty good with it, but she wanted to save her energy. Using her biotics too much made her tired and mommy always said you had to eat well when you had been practicing. Standing on her tiptoes, she pulled down the last box of formula powder, and wriggled two foils out of it. There were only five left after these two. She let the foils drop at her feet on the counter, and raised on her toes again to push the box back in its place. She wasn't really allowed to be on the counter, and mommy wouldn't like it if she left everything a Right Mess anyway. Taking a box of soup for herself, too, she closed the cupboard and sat herself on the cold counter, and set to mixing the powder from the foils into water. She was a little worried. The water didn't work as good as it used to, and she thought they might be running out, but the water had never run out before so she wasn't sure if it was possible. And there were so few foils left. Her sister would be really hungry after two more meals. Uska was kind of hungry already herself, but she understood that they didn't have that much stored away here. The baby wouldn't understand, she would just be hungry.

Uska was afraid they would have to go outside soon because they didn't have any more food, to look for mommy or at least one of their neighbors. She had promised to stay in the basement and stay quiet and guard her sister with the pistol and not to go out, but mommy had been gone a long time. She thought it had to be many days, at least, because of how many times she had felt too sleepy to stay awake anymore and had to go to sleep. She could turn on her om-ni-tool to see but she didn't want to because it was a stupid kids' model and it had to be recharged pretty often, and it was almost out of battery. She was saving it for Important Events. Knowing what day it was wasn't that important because the school was closed and she wouldn't go anyway before mommy was back to take her. Even the bottle was out of battery too, it didn't heat up anymore when she tried to turn it on, not since before the last time she slept. She waited for the bottle to fill with water, and then she shook it to make the powder mix so that the baby could drink the formula. She put the bottle under her shirt to warm it up a little in case her sister woke up soon, and then she opened her own meal. It was noq soup and she hated it which is why she had left those boxes for last, but now they were all she had left. It was better than being hungry, anyway. One box after this. And two and a half bottles for her sister. Then she would have to go out.

She cleaned out the soup box and folded it carefully in the recycler so that it would fit because it was getting pretty full because it hadn't been running at all. She took the bottle out from under her shirt and set it back on the counter top while she carefully slid off it herself and dropped quietly on the floor. Grabbing the bottle and sticking it under her arm, she padded out to the doorway to make sure nobody was there, and then quickly ran around the corner over to her bag. She carefully wrapped the bottle back up inside the dress, first over and then you had to go across with the sleeves, and then push it all the way to the bottom at an angle, and then you could slip the pistol on top of it and it would stay in place. She pulled the strings tight and made a Coming Together-knot so it would stay closed. She swung the baggy around her shoulders again, and snuck back across the pretty floor as carefully as she'd come the other way, although now she couldn't jump the last few tiles because there wasn't any plastic floor on the other side, just the bed and the other stuff.

Letting out a breath after making it all the way across without a sound, she crawled up on the bed, careful not to make it bounce or shift as she moved. She always slept on the side of the bed that was not at the wall so that her sister couldn't fall off, but she wasn't sleepy yet so she just put the bag down in one corner and pulled the pistol back out so that it was ready if she needed it and then she lay down behind her sister instead, hugging her a little. She didn't wake from the touch and just snuffled quietly when Uska pulled the blanket off her crest to make sure she didn't get too hot. Uska laid her head down and closed her eyes and reached for the little, bright mind of her sister, trying to surround it with happy thoughts like mommy always did for her when she had bad dreams.

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**A/N: This expands Uska and her sister's story a little. The first two chapters are already-published material from Unity, and I'll likely add two-three more.**

**Reviews, questions, comments, critiques, artwork and anything else you come up with are most welcome and appreciated as always! :)**


	2. Low Tide

Uska was at the top of the stairs, sitting on the cold surface of the second-to-last step with the pistol wedged between the step and the handrail, tightly but not so tightly that she couldn't get it out if she needed to. She looked at the hatch above her, the wood boards that daddy had gotten for the office room. They were real wood, she knew, not synthetic. You had to take care of them a lot more so she wasn't sure it was better than synthetic because they looked almost the same. Daddy had said that you knew, and that you could even smell the difference, but Uska didn't think she could smell anything except the oil that daddy put on them sometimes because that's what you had to do to keep the floor nice.

She looked at the hatch again. The seams were made so carefully that you couldn't see anything through them when it was closed, and besides the rug and the table were probably on top of it anyway. She'd heard mommy move them when she left because she had been right here at the top of the stairs listening.

Uska knew she wasn't as strong as mommy was but she was almost sure she could open it even if they were on top of it because the hinges were made so that they pushed upwards when you undid the latches and so they would help her push it open. She didn't think there would be anything else there because when she was still little she'd been pretty scared of Quakes and mommy had said that she had Designed the house so that even if there was a very big Quake they could go into the Quake Shelter which was the basement and they would be safe there and even if the entire house would break down but that would never happen, they could just sit safely in the basement and come back out when it was over. So mommy must have made it so that the house wouldn't break down on top of the hatch because then you couldn't get out when it was over, which was a very good idea. All the explosions could have been as strong as a very big Quake so she wasn't sure if the house was still okay, but she'd see soon.

She hoped it was okay, it was a good house. She missed her own room, too, and her stuff, and her bed. She didn't mind that she had to sleep in the same bed as her sister down here but her bed was much nicer.

Even if it was just the rug and the table, she could still need to use all her might to open the hatch so she had left her sister in the bedroom. She still didn't have as much time as she wanted though, because the baby was the most quiet and sleepy just after she ate and they were all out of powder. Uska wasn't sure if mommy could make the baby sleep, but she knew she couldn't so she had made the last bottle and given her sister half of it because then she would be quiet while Uska opened the hatch. Uska wasn't completely sure it was safe outside even though she had listened at the hatch a couple times and not heard anything, but They could still be there. Maybe They were just sleeping for example, then they would be quiet. Then if the baby woke later before they got out, or when they were outside, Uska could give her the rest of the bottle and she would be quiet or maybe even sleep until Uska found some more food to give her.

Uska held her breath and listened once more, careful to not move at all even though her wrists hurt a little bit because she had to push herself up and forward in a bad position. She couldn't hear anything, it was Dead Silent. She bit her lip as she lowered herself back down on the third highest step, and then she pulled the lock latches open on both sides. There was a small creak and then a hiss and her ears popped but the hatch didn't open hardly at all. She couldn't even see any light through the seams but she smelled smoke and something sweet. She froze in place again like a thief, but she still didn't hear anything. She touched the hatch but it was cool, and when she put her hand against the seam she felt just a little cool air. When she pulled her hand back, it smelled like smoke.

She sat herself back on the step and tried to think if it was safe. It didn't seem like there was a fire outside but she wasn't sure and she knew it was stupid not to be careful. At least if there was a fire maybe They would also stay away and not come near it so it could even be safer, but she had to prepare. She bit her lip and wrinkled her nose as she thought, but stopped right away when she noticed she was doing it… daddy always teased her when she did it, and said Uska was her Little Philosopher, but she liked that. Sometimes Erda teased her about it too but that she didn't like. Erda never wrinkled her nose. She looked like a Real Matriarch when she was thinking and not some stupid kid with a wrinkled nose. Uska wondered if Erda was hiding in a basement too.

She knew there was nothing for it except the breathing masks, and pushed herself off the step and quietly walked down the stairs to the Emergency Cabinet. It was already open because she'd taken out some blankets from there, so she reached up high and pulled down two of the masks. She set one on the bottom step of the stairs so she wouldn't forget to take it for her sister because she couldn't very well carry it with her now. Suddenly realizing she had left the pistol at the top of the stairs she looked quickly that the mask had instructions on it and then turned around and quickly padded up the stair as fast and quiet as she could, almost sure that They couldn't come until she got back up to the pistol, and They didn't. She left the pistol in its place still because it was near so she could take it if she needed it. She listened again while she looked at the Instruction Pictures. Daddy had shown how to use the mask when she'd bought the stuff for the cabinet, but Uska didn't really remember it very well.

It looked pretty simple, you just put the top of the cup on your nose and pressed a little so it went tight. And then you put a strap around the back of your neck and then another strap that went between the fringes over the back of the head. In the vids they sometimes had prettier and fancier ones where there wasn't a strap at all but instead there was like an armor piece that you put on your _meies_ and _ameien_ and then the mask part locked into them. Those were pretty cool, but this was just a simple one. At least it didn't pinch or rub when she finally got it on properly. She hated her clumsy fingers, it took her three tries to get the stupid neck strap hooked on the other side because she couldn't see anything. She took a few breaths to see if it worked. It did have a little blue light right there on the top of her nose, and she couldn't smell the smoke anymore so it probably did work.

She had secretly hoped that the hatch would have opened while she was downstairs, but it hadn't. She looked very carefully, but she couldn't see that it had changed at all. She glanced down at the pistol quick, and then she pushed on the hatch a little. It didn't move at all. She put both her hands against it but realized she didn't really have a good position so she put her knee down on the top step and her foot on the next one down and then she pushed up as hard as she could. The hatch still didn't move, not one bit. In the vids they sometimes shot at doors that wouldn't open, but she was pretty sure it wouldn't help at all and it seemed Dangerous too. Then she remembered that your legs were much stronger than your arms even though she was pretty good at gymnastics and climbing and stuff. She got up on the top step in a crouch and she rose up a little so that her back was against the hatch even though it hurt a bit when her fringes got shmooshed against it. She put her hands on the sides of the small hole in the roof that the hatch was in and then she tried to push up with her legs as hard as she could, so hard that she bit into her lip. It only moved up barely a centimeter.

She slumped on the step and wiped her tears away furiously, trying very hard not to let her sniffles out even though they hurt her chest because they might wake the baby or They could hear. Why did she have to be so weak? She had to get the hatch open… they couldn't stay down here any longer. She didn't want to think about it, but she was getting really scared that maybe nobody could find them if They couldn't either. She snorted quietly and wiped her nose on her sleeve. She _had to_ open it. Mommy had said that you were Never allowed to do it so close, but Uska knew she wasn't going to be strong enough by herself, and maybe the mask would help a little bit. She wiped her eye and nose one last time, and patted away the blood from her lip, and got up with her back against the hatch again. This time she didn't push with her hands because she needed them. She concentrated very hard, gathering power just like mommy had taught her. Then at the same time as she pushed up with her legs with a grunt, she thrust her hands upwards, directing her biotic force at the hatch just in front of her head.

It felt just like when she'd run straight into the tree last summer, a really hot pain in her nose and it went all white in her eyes and the tears came out again. She tore away the mask without thinking because her nose was completely stuffed and she couldn't breathe. She fell on her knees on the step until through her cough and snorts the blood spilled out onto the step and on her hands because she was trying to rub the pain away from her face. When she finally could see proper again and her cough wasn't as bad anymore, she suddenly noticed she felt very, very cold.

One sleeve still raised up to her face to try to stop the bleeding in her nose, she turned her head upwards and saw the stars. But this was the office room! The basement was right between mommy's big drawing table and the drawers with all the important stuff from doctors and so on. She quickly slammed the switch to turn the emergency lights in the basement off because it was dark outside and very cautiously got up on her knees to peek through the hatch, holding her breath and trying to make no sound at all. She couldn't hear anything at all anywhere around her, not the neighbors, no shuttles, not the highway, not even any animals or the wind even though she felt it. She saw nothing moving, no light. She still smelled the smoke very strong but there wasn't a fire anywhere.

She was pretty sure nobody had noticed her even though she must have made a terrible ruckus. Even the baby was still quiet downstairs. She pulled the pistol out of its keeping place and made sure that it was turned on and that the safety light was on. Then she pushed the button for the Night Mode because the lights were really bright in the dark otherwise and she knew where she had to put her finger to make the safety go off if she needed to. With one final look and listen downstairs and around the hatch, she stood up carefully and lifted one knee on the floor and steadied herself with her hands as she got the other one up too. The house had disappeared almost completely from around her. There wasn't almost anything left of her home except some broken walls that she could see now that her eyes were a little better in the dark. Here and there under rubbles she saw things she thought she recognized. The surface of mommy's big table, the top of a bookcase, one side of her sister's crib with the silly toy still on it… she lifted her free hand off the floor and wiped her eyes with her ash-smudged sleeve. She didn't have time to be sad about her home right now, she decided with a frown. Slowly she crawled toward the front of the house on all fours even though she scraped her knees and palms on all kinds of sharp things on the floor but it was better than walking up and be seen because you were stupid. She stopped at the crib to grab the soft toy even though it had lost two of its tentacles when she looked at it and stuffed it under her shirt. Her sister probably wouldn't notice it was missing the two and she had always liked hugging and squeezing the thing so maybe it would make her feel better anyway.

Uska saw the big hole, which was a crater, even before she got to where their front door had been. There wasn't enough light to see many details, but it was very big. More than four big shuttles could have fit inside of it, easy. She hoped very hard that Erda hadn't been hiding in her basement if they had one because the hole was right near where her house had been. All the other houses of the neighbors were all completely flattened like Uska's home was. She didn't know if anyone was still hiding in their homes but she knew she wasn't strong enough to help because she didn't think she could make such a big biotic push again until she had gotten to eat something, but she could tell other people that They weren't here and that they should come to look for her neighbors in here. She turned back toward the back yard, her tummy growling and aching now that she had thought about food again.

She let out a little whimper when she got to where the back yard had started, not because of how much her knees and hands hurt but because she was suddenly scared that maybe there _wasn't_ anybody else. Their house had been on a little hill that looked over the entire city in the valley… but she couldn't see anything except the shapes of collapsed and broken buildings against the sky. It was pretty far away but even the lights that daddy had liked to look at so much in the evenings were all gone all the way to the sea. There had been a big forest that went all the way down the hillside to where the city started, but she couldn't make out any trees. Nothing moved.

Uska stood up slowly, just staring at the nothing. She didn't know what to do. She hadn't even thought that the city wouldn't be there, that _somebody_ wouldn't be there even if all her neighbors had left somewhere. She didn't know what to do. She sat down in the ash and she cried. She cried big, heaving sobs because everything was _gone_ until she couldn't breathe anymore.

Then her baby sister cried, too, a soft mewl from all the way down in the basement but still loud in her ears.

She got up and ran to the hatch and padded down the stairs, trying to clear her nose and wipe away her stupid tears on the way. She'd have to stop being so scared and sad when she got to her sister, she knew, because the baby would notice and it was enough that one of them was scared and sad, not both. The baby was crying very loudly when Uska got back to the bed but she calmed down a little bit when Uska took her into her lap and rocked her and tried to soothe her mind with small happy thoughts. The baby settled down to drink from her bottle quietly and happily when Uska reached for it and brought it to her sister's mouth.

They couldn't stay here and her sister was her responsibility. Her plan had been to go to the city if she couldn't find any of her neighbors, or maybe the school. There was a store that was not far away on the shuttle at least, but she didn't really remember how to get there especially not in the dark. So they had to go to the city. She _knew_ there were stores there that she could find food from and maybe there were even some people. Maybe they were sleeping because it was night and that's why she couldn't see anybody.

She didn't have much to take with her. She had already prepared the baby before she'd gone to open the hatch in case they had to leave quickly. She probably hadn't gotten it quite right but she had helped many times when mommy had made the sling where she carried the baby and the sling Uska had made was good enough even though it wasn't as good and it had taken her a few tries to get it the correct length because she was much smaller than mommy and she couldn't well walk with the baby at her knees. With her sister happily sucking on the bottle, Uska carefully lifted her and slid the sling straps around her shoulders and back, and stood up. The little one didn't seem to mind, so Uska wrapped the belt she had made for carrying the pistol around her waist and tucked the pistol into it. It wasn't a very good belt, but you could tie it again if you needed to and it was better than carrying the pistol or putting it in her bag. She put the stuffed toy in the bag along with the few items she thought might be good like her stupid omni because maybe she could find somewhere to charge it, and some blankets too. It wasn't really cold outside even though it had felt like it at first, so she didn't use one now but she could put one on her shoulders if it did get cold.

Her sister smiled and cooed when she finally finished what was left of her bottle and Uska put it in the bag that she tied and then swung on her back on top of the straps of the sling. Uska tried to smile back at her and brushed her cheek and pressed her nose like she liked.

She looked around the room one last time to make sure she hadn't forgotten to take something important, and then she walked up the stairs, carefully at first until she was sure that the baby was secure. She crawled out of the hatch, wiped her eyes and tried to put her fear away but still be very careful and watchful, and headed for the path that went down the hill toward the city.


End file.
